


these dreams (like ashes, float away)

by riveriver



Category: Life and Death - Stephenie Meyer, Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst, Blackwater, Drama, F/M, Pining, WIP, i have no idea what just happened
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27361897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riveriver/pseuds/riveriver
Summary: Julie has had plenty of time to prepare for this, to steel herself for the loss, but still she feels Lee's absence like a phantom limb. She feels her wolves waiting with bated breath for him to succeed and prove them all wrong. Because if Lee can do it — if he can stop phasing with his temper — then they can, too.
Relationships: Jules Black/Lee Clearwater, Julie "Jules" Black/Leland "Lee" Clearwater, Julie Black/Leland Clearwater, Lee Clearwater/Julie Black
Comments: 9
Kudos: 20





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> Blackwater. Drabble fic wherein Julie is Alpha (and has been almost immediately after she joined the Pack, because you cannot convince me that Twilight wouldn't have been hella different with female wolves running things with their rightful Alpha at the helm. I will die on this hill; fight me). Varying POV, update schedule sketchy. 
> 
> Title from 'Let It Burn' by Red. 
> 
> Twilight and its inclusive material (including its alternate universe, 'Life and Death') is copyright to Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.

**one: julie**

.

Leland is the first to leave her Pack.

It shouldn't come as a shock, really. He has sworn for as long as they can all remember that he will stop phasing as soon as possible. The moment he had a passable level of control, he was gone — cold turkey, never to look back, to hell with them all.

Julie has had plenty of time to prepare for this, to steel herself for the loss, but still she feels Lee's absence like a phantom limb. She feels her wolves waiting with bated breath for him to succeed and prove them all wrong. Because if Lee can do it — if he can stop phasing with his temper — then they can, too.

She wonders who she will lose next. Wonders what it is that makes Lee hers to lose.

.

**two: leland**

.

He has never been good at speaking his mind.

It gets worse after having spent two years of his life simply casting a thought and receiving immediate response, his raw thoughts and feelings on show for everyone else. He hadn't cared what they'd seen or what they'd thought, because finally he had been understood.

Now? Now he has quit phasing he struggles more than ever, still entirely too used to sharing his head with so little effort. Now he gets frustrated when people don't understand what he is trying to say, when people can't read him like he can read them.

It's why he still goes to the garage, where Julie understands. Where he understands her. Whether it's her brow lifting, lips curving, shoulders tensing, he knows what all her movements mean, knows the words that would accompany those little tells of hers if she voiced them. This is how he speaks, with body language, with touch. This is how wolves speak.

Julie is better. She has always been able to rally her Pack with a few fierce sentences; she can share her feelings without stumbling, without fear; she was able to re-negotiate the treaty and rearrange its boundary lines to accommodate battles and hunting requirements, her head high and her back straight all the while.

Lee tries to absorb her confidence. But instead he struggles through each day, trying to be normal, trying to work through his temper. He struggles to the point he is unable to do anything else except fall into bed night after night, utterly exhausted. And he dreams.

He dreams of Julie in her garage, dreams of himself leaning against the door and watching her.

She is cross-legged on the concrete floor, her back to him as she considers a part of the Rabbit she is dismantling. He doesn't know what exactly — she has spent countless hours explaining, countless days trying to teach him the names and tricks to things, but he can never quite focus on her words more than he does her lips and the lines of her body. Especially when she ties her hair back before leaning over to stare into the depths of her engine.

The beat-up stereo plays mindless pop nearby. Julie swears to anyone who listens that she doesn't know the lyrics, but often he catches her humming underneath her breath as she loses herself within her sanctuary.

(Lee has long since learned that Julie calms whenever her hands touch metal — she finds her centre, breathes more freely. Because whilst his Alpha has the fire to tear down forests, cities, the fire to burn all the bloodsuckers within them, if she's given her a toolbox then she embraces her spanners and her screwdrivers with more reverence than anything else in her world.)

She's humming as he walks in, and then she is smiling after he wraps his arms around her and tells her how much he has missed her, keeping her close for longer than he's kept anyone in years. He says _yours_ by the way his shoulders drop when she presses her lips to the line of his jaw; he says _mine_ by tilting his head and claiming her mouth for his own.

"I need to work," she says when she breaks away, her laughter breathless and her cheeks flushed. But she doesn't wrestle out of her arms, not even as he holds her tighter and dips his head down to meet her again.

Her lips are soft and wet against his, yielding all control. Her days are full of keeping her sisters in line, protecting them and the reservation; her life is theirs so that they can all live — but with him, only him, she surrenders.

Her arms wind around his shoulders and she shapes her body against his, shivering when he trails his fingers over her shoulders, down her back, along her hips. Marking patterns into her skin is his way of showing her what he means, and she understands.

He feels her grin against his neck. "I love you too, honey."

And then he wakes.

.

**three: julie**

.

Three months and sixteen days after he quits phasing, Lee starts dating a girl called Natalie.

He meets her during his first year at U-Dub — because that's his thing now, the thing which keeps him distracted, focused long enough that he can stave off a phase and keep himself on two feet, even though he used to say that college was Sam and Adam's dream. Not his.

(It's not what hurts though, really. What hurts is that he must have applied ages ago, that he was thinking about leaving before he allowed that thought be heard. He planned it. On his own.)

Natalie is funny (not dark, not dry, just . . . funny). And she's a little overbearing (but so is Lee), and she doesn't know how to change a tyre (but then neither does he, so as far as Julie's concerned they're both totally screwed, aren't they, because they're gonna have to pay recovery fees when they get a flat and his go-to mechanic refuses to answer her phone — and then Lee will realise how horribly he's fucked up, won't he). Honestly. The girl can't even tell the difference between a Mercedes and a Honda.

Julie learns all of this when Lee brings The Girlfriend to the reservation at the same time he comes home for Christmas, and says, "Jules — this is Natalie, my girlfriend."

He says it with an ounce of hesitancy — but that's probably because Lee knows Julie so well that he can tell what she's thinking when Natalie tosses her golden hair over her shoulder and holds him a little too possessively for anyone's taste.

It's not that Julie is jealous. It's just . . . this girl, she's not Pack, is she? But maybe that's what Lee wants. Maybe he wants to be less . . . connected with this girl. And as the days, weeks go by, he seems okay with Natalie not knowing the sixteen different corners of his mind which Julie has come to know so well.

Maybe, she thinks, maybe it's less about what Lee wants and more about what he needs.

And he seems calmer, happier than he has been in a long while (Paula swears it's the sex, that's all), so Julie plasters a smile on her face. And she tries to get to know The Girlfriend.

"Natalie," Lee corrects, long-suffering but amused all the same.

Jules curses herself; she must have said that out loud again.

.

**four: leland**

.

There's only five in the Pack now: Julie, Emma, Quil, Paula and Sarah.

For all she initially refused to take up the mantle during those early days, leadership sits well with Julie.

Lee was not part of the Pack when Sam was Alpha, and he's inherently grateful for it. He's been told over and over how heavy-handed his ex-girlfriend-almost-fiancee was with her directives, how disorganised she was, and he knows that the Pack would have fallen to pieces long before he joined if Julie had not assumed control.

The girls love Julie — but she has always been easy to love. And they're all in perfect sync with her. When she moves, they move.

Sarah still hangs off Julie's every word, but it's not hero-worship anymore; it's respect, it's love, it's Sarah wanting to do the right thing because it's the right thing and not just because she wants Julie to notice her.

And Julie — she loves Sarah. She loves Emma, Quil. Even Paula, who is unbelievably mellow these days under the Alpha's command. The true Alpha, who loves each of her wolves equally and would die before a bad word is said against them. And it makes Lee so green with envy that sometimes he has to look away, has to wipe the scowl off his face before anyone notices. But that's why he wanted to leave in the first place, wasn't it? Because . . . because . . .

He shuts everything down, focuses instead on building the bonfire.

A vampire hasn't crossed their lands in months, and they're celebrating the only way they know how: they build a bonfire, making it bigger than the last, and Julie gives her Pack the night off on two conditions.

One. The agreement that they each take turns running short bursts every hour.

Two. They invite everyone else.

Everyone.

Sam and Elliott are stretched out over a blanket nearby, all four of their entwined hands over her stomach. She must be two months along now — Lee can't remember; it feels like yesterday she quit the Pack right after him and then announced her bundle of joy the second she took a test. Feels like yesterday since he tried to drink himself into oblivion after hearing the news.

(Lee learned on the same day that even though he's not phasing anymore, he still can't get drunk. No matter how hard he tries. The worst that happens is that he gets a little dehydrated, but it seems that he won't be able to totally leave the wolf behind after all.)

Wrapped around Kam, Jade watches her best friend. She stares at Sam's non-existent bump with a Look on her face that has Lee rolling his eyes and wondering how long it will be before Jade's announcing the start of her own family. There'll be a whole brood of tiny cubs on the Rez before they know it.

Girls.

Beside him, Natalie leans her head against his shoulder. She's been watching Sam, too. "I love kids," she sighs up at him dreamily. "I can't wait to have some of my own."

Across the fire, Julie chokes on her soda. Emma has to hit her back several times before her throat clears.

.

Later, Lee finds Julie underneath the cover of the trees, staring into the night, scanning the quiet darkness. Arms at her sides, back straight, entirely at attention. He wishes he could remember the last time he saw her laugh.

Lee holds a hotdog out to her, and Jules looks down at it with a blank expression.

"I haven't seen you eat all night," he says by way of explanation.

"You haven't seen me at all lately," she tells him, her voice devoid of emotion, but she takes the hotdog. She doesn't eat it. "You stopped coming over."

He doesn't answer, because he can't tell her that he smells oil and metal in his dreams. That he can't hole up with her in the garage anymore in fear he'll break.

Julie sniffs. "Where did The Girlfriend get to?"

"Nat," he says pointedly.

"Yeah, that's what I said. Where is she?"

He rolls his eyes. "What do you care?"

"I don't," Julie says in that same bland voice that betrays nothing. "She's not Pack."

The unspoken ' _Why should I?_ ' hangs in the air afterwards, but Lee lets it go. Not because he knows he should defend Natalie, but because Julie's life is the Pack and, some days, she cannot see past that. It'd be a waste of breath to try and argue with her about it.

He opts for a lame shrug. "Neither am I."

"Yes, you are," she says. She keeps her stare on the trees in front of her, but he sees her fist clench around the bread, squashing it. "You choosing to leave us doesn't change that. You'll always be one of my—" She swallows harshly, breathes deep. "You'll always be Pack. And you're not doing her — _call me Nat_ — any favours by pretending you're something you're not."

"I'm not—"

"Do you even like her?" Julie asks suddenly. "Or is Paula right? Is it just the sex?"

Lee looks back at Julie, but there's nothing in her face except quiet curiosity. "What do you care?" he asks her again.

Julie holds his eyes for a long, long time. Then she sighs, and she hands the hotdog back to him before turning to leave. She's disappointed, but he doesn't know why.

"I'm not hungry," she says, already walking away. "Make sure you say goodbye when you leave for Seattle again, won't you? It will upset Sarah otherwise; she missed you after Thanksgiving."

He launches the hotdog, watches it fly through the trees. Wishes he still could, too.

.

Leland pulls his sister up into a hug when he calls it a night, and he looks for Julie over her shoulder.

She's standing at the fire, eyes staring unseeingly into the roaring flames. She doesn't even notice him leave.

.

**five: julie**

.

It's been four months and twenty days, and still she misses him. Her mind is empty, her days too quiet.

Emma and Quil, they've always been her friends, her sisters in all but blood, but they're not Lee. And they do their best to fill that void he's left behind, except Quil's world revolves around little Clay and Emma . . . Emma has gotten it into her head that, soon, it will be time for her to leave the Pack too.

It was hard when Lee left. It will be worse when Emma does. Because Julie has always loved them both the most, more than anyone or anything.

At least when Lee quit, she still had Emma. Now she will have neither.

"Look on the bright side," Paula says brightly when they rise back up onto two legs at the forest's edge (five months and twenty-one days later), yanking on their clothes. The rest of the Pack has just learned what Emma wants to do. "You've still got me." She shoves at Julie's shoulder. "Does this mean I'm your Second now?"

Julie shoves her back. "You're not even Third."

Paula shrugs, untroubled. "Personally," she says loftily, "I always thought that there was a too-heavy dose of favouritism in this Pack. Emma has been your Second from the minute you took over. Lee was your Third. Then Quil was your Third. What about the rest of us, huh? You know, those of us who haven't grown up with you or who you haven't secretly been in love with since before puberty?"

If it wasn't for the grin splitting Paula's face, Julie would have probably pushed her over by now. As it is, she can't do anything other than shake her head and breathe a laugh. She and Paula sorted out their differences years ago; as it turns out, all the girl needs is an Alpha who's not imprinted, a family that's reasonably functional, and regular praise for a job well done. She doesn't have that at home.

"So?" Paula hedges. "Can I? It's not like I'm going to leave you too, or anything, so you don't have to worry about that."

Julie considers it, but, for the life of her, she can't see a reason why she shouldn't give her sister the position. Paula has proved unfailingly loyal (if a little annoying and quick to anger still, but only occasionally) and exactly what a Second needs to be.

An Alpha had to be cold at times, unyielding and ruthless when necessary. Like ice. (It's a dangerous line — one which Sam had crossed too often.) And a Second needed to be the fire to that ice, to challenge the Alpha when they needed it most. A Third needed to be rock, grounded enough to level the first two out.

Julie thinks that if she is ice, as she's had to become, then Paula is fire. The perfect Second, just as Emma has been for nearly three years. And Quil is their rock. Her perfect Third. Her cousin.

Except—

"We gotta grow up some time or another, Paula. You really want to do this for the rest of your life?"

Paula's a few inches shorter than Julie is, but she slings an arm over her shoulders as they start the walk home. "Do you?" she challenges. "You wanna be stuck with just Quil mooning over Clay and Lee's little sister for the rest of your life?"

Julie thinks about the long years ahead, how many of them will be spent waiting with Quil until little Clay grows up. Until Sarah leaves — something which might not be too far off in their distant future; the kid's gotta graduate, or Lee will sling both her _and_ his sister up by their proverbials.

"Fine. You can be Second. But you can't rub Quil's nose in it," Julie warns, "and if you start abusing your power, I'll gut you."

Paula feigns hurt, hand flying to her chest. "Me? _Abuse_?"

Julie shoves her again, and this time her Second falls.

.

**six: julie**

.

Emma leaves five days later.

.

**seven: leland**

.

It takes Leland a long time to realise that Julie was right — that he's pretending, even if she didn't really know the real truth of what she was saying at the time.

After dreaming of her for ten nights in a row (or maybe it's thirty, or a hundred, he doesn't really know; he stopped counting the week after he stopped phasing), Lee leaps out of his dorm bed and into his bathroom, and he has to drench the back of his neck with cold water to stop himself from splitting his skin right there and then.

Natalie doesn't wake. She never does.

His girlfriend spends more nights here in the dorm with him than not. And if he's honest, it's more nights than he likes. He thought she would have ended things by now, but she seems determined to cling onto whatever it is that initially sparked between them — that fleeting hint of chemistry.

It had faded by the time he'd found himself agreeing to a second date, but he'd been so determined to start living a semi-normal life that he'd let the whole thing carry on.

He knows he's a total asshole for it. And he knows he shouldn't have taken her home to the Rez, home to a life he can never tell her the truth about. He's probably given her false hope, or something — even if, to the girl's credit, she hadn't baulked before all those other females who Lee had introduced as his closest family.

 _Do you even like her?_ asks Julie's echo, and he wonders whether she knew she was right about that too. But of course did she, because Julie knows everything. Julie scents moods and feelings as easily as she reads the thoughts on the faces of her Pack.

_You'll always be Pack._

He splashes more cold water over himself and holds onto the sink with shaking hands.

In the next room, Natalie snores.

Leland sleeps on the cool, bathroom tiles for the rest of the night. It's the only thing which calms the burning underneath his skin.

It doesn't stop the dreams.

.

He breaks it off with Natalie the next morning.

.

**eight: leland**

.

It's hard, staying on campus where he seems to run into Nat enough that he kind of worries that she's stalking him over the course of the next week (why can't he run into Adam that often?) — but he sticks with it, college, and he tells himself that he's not going to go home again until after Finals Week. Not even for Spring Break.

Sarah is disappointed, and she laments over the phone that she misses him, that they all miss him.

He promises to see her soon. Just not yet. This is his semi-normal life; he might not be able to keep a girlfriend, might not be able to sleep through the night, but he's going to do this. He's going to get through his first year of college if it kills him.

Sarah doesn't understand, he knows. He doesn't really understand it either — the reservation was, is, will always be his heart, but he just feels like he needs to prove himself that while it's his heart, it's not the world. It's not everything.

Surely there's more to life than La Push, more to being Pack. He only needs to find whatever that is.

Still, he asks his sister about Julie and their sisters, his family. He shamelessly pries for information.

"Emma quit," Sarah tells him with a hint of sadness. "Jules took it really hard — harder than she let on, but we all knew. It was almost as bad as when you left."

Lee presses his cell to his ear, leans forward on the park bench he's dropped onto. "When?"

"Couple weeks ago now. She was so pissed when we took down those pair of bloodsuckers last week, she—"

He surges to his feet and ignores the startled looks from passersby. "You did _what?_ "

"Uh — yeah. Didn't you . . . Probably not, I guess, you've not phased for so long now, same as Sam and Jade," his sister says a little dismissively. "But Emma, she had just kind of got a hold of herself and then Jules put out the call, so you can imagine how annoyed she was when she had to start her streak from scratch the next day. But I think she enjoyed it, really. It was so awesome, Lee — the five of us against these two 'suckers, I don't think they even knew what was happening until we—"

"When? When did this happen?"

Sarah pauses. "Last week," she says, a little annoyed at the interruption of what she surely thinks is a fantastic retelling. "I told you."

"Yes, but what day?"

"Tuesday night," she tells him, sounding confused. "I remember, because . . ."

His sister carries on, launching again into her story of five against two, but he's not really listening. Because last Tuesday night had been the night he'd slept on the bathroom floor — it had been one of the worst nights he's had since leaving the Pack, so bad he'd wanted to split his skin and . . . and now he realises that, even from miles away, he'd unconsciously been fighting Julie's summons.

He calls Jade after Sarah finally hangs up, and she doesn't even say hello.

"You heard, then," she says by way of greeting.

"Was it bad for you, too?"

"I hurled my guts up. Scared Kam half to death. And then we heard the howls," Jade says, and he thinks she sounds a little disappointed. But he's too enraged to feel the disappointment of missing the battle just yet — what if all this has been for nothing? "I think that made it worse. Knowing what was happening. Consider yourself lucky you're a million miles away."

"Just a hundred and fifty-two," he says.

(Not that he's counted.)

.

It takes him another week to work up the courage to call Jules. A week of falling behind in his classes, still too preoccupied and downright furious that he's suffered through months of pain only for any kind of progress to be shattered when a rotting vampire crosses their lands again.

She answers on the second ring — but he's called her house phone. No caller ID for her to avoid, flashing on her cell. He's not sure she would have answered otherwise, considering how they last left things.

"Hello, Leland."

"How'dya know it was me?"

She sighs, and he imagines her running her fingers through her wayward hair. "Call it a feeling, I guess."

Lee tries to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry, and Julie sighs again in the silence that's fallen. Then she says, "Look, if you're calling to give me hell about—"

"I broke up with Natalie."

It's not exactly what he'd planned to say, and he almost slaps himself, but he needed her to know that. Before anything else.

A beat. Then, "Who?"

"Nat," he says, hoping the girl's not hiding in the hallway of his dorm with her ear pressed against his door. He's still — quite literally — bumping into her everywhere.

Julie's still quiet, so he adds (with a roll of his eyes), "You know — ' _The Girlfriend_ '."

"Oh, her," she replies flatly, clearly uninterested. "What happened? Did you get a flat tyre?"

He has no idea what she's talking about. "What?"

"Did you . . . It doesn't matter." She sounds slightly amused, but she doesn't laugh. He's still waiting to hear her do that. "When are you coming home?"

All the promises Lee has made to himself fly right out of his head, and he tells Julie that he'll be home for Spring Break.


	2. part two

**nine: julie**

.

As is tradition, the Alpha presents the ashes of her Pack's victory to the Chief.

Julie's lost count of how many times she has done this now — how many times she has been forced to stand before the Chief and her Council after every kill so they can honour this tradition. And yet her mother's eyes shine with pride as if it's the very first time all over again.

Every time this happens, every time her mom looks at her in this way, Julie always feels like she's fifteen again and has just announced that she's accepted her birthright. Always imagines what it would have been like if she chose differently.

Bonnie pulls the leather thong from her neck — the proof of Yaha Uta's kill which they have kept safe for hundreds of years. She holds it fiercely, victoriously. As if this kill belongs to the Council, too. As if the Pack are theirs to command.

One day — one day, they will learn that an Alpha does not submit.

 _Now,_ her wolf howls.

 _Not yet,_ Julie whispers back. _Not yet._

The Council agree that they will keep a handful of ashes to warn them if the Cold Ones try to put themselves back together, and Julie has to ignore her wolf as they then give the order for the Pack to spread the rest far and wide, to the far corners of the world and into its oceans.

Her wolf pushes against her bones, but she leashes it.

( _Not yet_. _Not yet._ )

Julie nods to her Elders, her mother, and she promises that she and her Pack will do as they say. And they smile back at her, appeased, because they know — they _know_ what she is capable of. What power she holds in her hands. But they'd rather believe that they hold the reins in this, that she and her Pack will always bow down to them. That belief — it's probably the only thing that allows them to rest easy at night.

They wouldn't shut their eyes again if they'd seen what Julie has seen. If they'd heard how the two red-eyes had screamed and begged for their lives towards the end, they would be horrified.

Oh, the things she could tell them. She could tell them that vampires taste like rotten fruit, their venom-blood like bleach. She could tell them that their snarls sound like rolling thunder, their screams like fingernails on a chalkboard. She could tell them how her Pack hurled and gagged for hours after tearing the creatures into pieces with nothing but teeth and claws.

But she doesn't. Instead she holds her tongue, and she lets them believe what they will.

Because one day — one day, they will learn.

( _Not yet._ )

.

**ten: julie**

.

After the ashes of the bloodsuckers are carried on the wind, Emma leaves again.

The Pack expect it this time, and so there's less fanfare, less upset amongst them, and Julie's wolves bounce back from the loss quicker than normal. But still Julie spends a month feeling disorientated from being split in several different directions. Still, she quietly hurts.

Quietly — because she will never tell them how it feels.

Julie learned too late that being an Alpha takes _everything._ Requires everything, every single ounce of magic running through her veins, because she cannot give or be anything less than her wolves need and deserve.

Her wolves. Not Sam's. Not the Council's. Not Bonnie's.

It is for _her_ wolves that Julie hands over everything she has. And then they leave her anyway.

She knows why. She understands, she does. She would leave too, if she were able — but she can't. The day she's able to stop phasing is the day that there are no more wolves to lead and no more vampires to kill.

There will always be vampires. And that means there will always be wolves.

She's the only one who ever seems to remember that part.


	3. part three

**eleven: leland**

.

Until he was eighteen, until he joined Julie's Pack, he'd only ever known the Rez and its slow-paced way of life. So, really, he should know all too well how days can drag on and on and on. He should be used to it, but instead he seems to have forgotten how painful it can actually be — the waiting. His impatience for Spring Break to arrive seems to make time slow down more than ever.

With only a week to go until he has an excuse to return home, he's in an off-campus coffee shop and waiting to be served, lost in his own head as he seriously measures up the merits between either skipping his last stretch of classes or asking the hurried barista for a job, just to pass the time, when someone taps him on the shoulder.

Leland does and doesn't expect to see Adam.

He knows Julie's brother is a college senior now, of course — they were bound to run into each other at one point or another, being at the same college and all, but it's still a bit of a surprise. They haven't seen each other in over three years.

Adam is in equal disbelief. He stares at him like he's seen a ghost.

" _Lee?_. . . Shit, man — I knew it was you!" The eldest Black twin looks him up and down, a critical eyebrow raised. "Uhm, dude. You know steroids are bad for you, right?"

Lee's six-foot-seven and weighs two-hundred-and-eighty pounds. Maybe less, if he's lost any of that solid muscle he gained after years of running patrols and ending vampires — but Adam isn't to know that. He has avoided the Reservation for as long as he's been in college. He didn't even come home for Holly's funeral.

Lee feels himself scowling at the thought. Aaron didn't come home, either.

Adam's face falls. "So you hate me now, huh."

"No," Lee says. "Just surprised you remember who I am, is all."

"I . . ." His old friend sighs. "Yeah, I guess I deserved that."

"You guess."

Adam's shoulders drop, and he shakes his head sadly, but Lee can't find it within himself to feel bad about it. The line moves forward, and he moves with it.

Adam is hot on his heels. "What are you doing in Seattle? You're not a student at U-Dub, are you?"

"I am, actually."

Adam doesn't answer. He just keeps staring at him — almost as if he's having a hard time believing it. Like Lee shouldn't exist in this world. _His_ world.

And maybe, Lee thinks, just maybe he shouldn't. He can fake it all he wants, this new semi-sane life of his, but perhaps he's just not cut out for it after all. He's been thinking about it for a while.

It's just too bad that he's too stubborn to quit, isn't it?

But, shit, he fucking _hates_ the city. Hates Seattle, hates college. But he'll be damned if he goes back to La Push with his tail in between his legs before the year's up.

(Spring Break doesn't count — even if he does end up going home a week earlier than he promised Jules. The week he went back for Christmas with Natalie on his arm doesn't count, either.)

The line moves again, and Adam is _still_ staring at him.

"Can I help you with something, Black?"

"Uhm." Adam swallows audibly. "Can I — can I get you a coffee?"

Lee doesn't really see the point in coffee. Like alcohol, caffeine doesn't affect him anymore thanks to his stellar metabolism. He's only here for the pastries (and perhaps a job; he's still undecided on that part) because his appetite hasn't changed much either.

He ends up saying, "Sure," anyway, because he's always been a bit of a doormat when it comes to the twins and their little sister — no-one else — and he just nods when Adam tells him to go and find a table.

This is going to be an awkward-as-fuck conversation.

.

**twelve: julie**

.

Julie knows Lee is home the second he steps foot back on the Reservation. She can't really explain _how_ she knows; she just _feels_ it. Suddenly, she is less torn, her heartstrings less stretched — because the further her wolves go, the harder it is on her.

(She will never tell them.)

Suddenly, she feels more whole than she has in months. That's how she knows.

She doesn't seek him out right away. Instead she hands authority to Paula for a whole forty-eight hours, because she fully intends to take advantage of the sense of rightness Lee's homecoming brings. Sometimes, she needs to be selfish — for her, the human, not the wolf — and she can afford to be now that they are all together in La Push again. _All_ of them, right where they belong.

Finally.

Relaxed for the first time in weeks, Julie falls into a deep sleep, deeper than any she's had in the years since Samantha Uley yielded the Pack to her, and she doesn't wake for sixteen blissful hours.

.

Of course, the peace doesn't last.

.

Her brother gapes at her as if he doesn't believe she's real. Which is ironic, if you think about it, considering she didn't think that she'd ever see him in the house again after he high-tailed it to college on a scholarship and hasn't looked back since.

Birthdays, Christmases, Easter — he hasn't been home for any holidays of the sort in over three years. Their only contact has been over the phone, and even that has been strained at times. She's lucky if she gets to speak to him four times a year: on her birthday, Bonnie's birthday, his and Aaron's birthday, and Christmas. Quite honestly, she wouldn't be surprised if he forgets she exists the rest of the time.

It's not as if she blames him or Aaron for not wanting to be around after their dad died or anything. They made sure that they escaped as soon as they were able to — one twin to Seattle, the other to Hawaii.

But she blames them for leaving her behind.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Adam is sitting at the kitchen table, appearing more at home than he has a right to. He blinks stupidly at her. "Jules?"

Julie rubs the last of the sleep from her eyes, looking around as if her other brother might be hiding somewhere nearby. "What are you doing here?" she asks again. "What's happened?"

Her brother frowns. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, who died? Where's Mom?"

Adam sputters. "' _Who died?'_ "

"Something must have happened, dumbass." She looks around again, still fighting her disbelief through exhaustion. If Aaron isn't here, where is her mom? And just how can she still be _so_ tired after sleeping for so long? "You wouldn't be here, otherwise."

"Nothing's happened." Adam doesn't lose his frown. "What happened to you, sprout? You used to be nice."

"I grew up."

There's a lot more Julie could say. Horrible, nasty things only the Pack have ever heard: her innermost thoughts and feelings of being abandoned by her brothers when she and Bonnie needed them the most. Feelings about being the one who had to look after their mom, having to watch the woman get worse year after year and steadily more dependent until she finally lost all feeling in her feet. Hell, Bonnie can't even shower without help now, can hardly remember her insulin or—

No. She won't think about it.

Julie's control is infinite these days. It has been _years_ since she's lost her temper to the point that she can't think in straight lines, and she's not about to start on that downward spiral now. Not for something — _someone_ — as stupid as her brother who's suddenly decided to show his face around the reservation again. Who has come _home._

No. Julie only phases when _she_ wills it now. Not her emotions.

She is the Alpha.

Julie straightens her back and regards her brother as closely as he regards her. "Why are you here, Adam."

Her wolf snorts its approval when her brother is the first to drop his gaze— _as he should_ , says the wolf, the Alpha; _we do not yield_ — and Julie lets the silence stretch between them, until finally Adam sighs and leans back in his chair.

"I bumped into Lee at college," he says, barely audible, and her heart skips a beat. "And he . . . _convinced_ me that it was time to — to come home."

"Convinced you?"

"Threatened." Adam rubs the back of his neck, eyes still averted. "If you're going to give me a hard time, then you should know that he's done it already. In public. And Mom did too. I'm surprised she didn't wake you; she cried for an hour. Then she yelled at me."

"Well what did you expect? Welcome home banners and baked goods? You've been gone nearly—"

"Four years, I know. I've been told." Adam pushes out his chair and stands, hands outstretched. "Can we not do this? Please? I'm having a hard enough time looking at you — you're all . . . all _grown up_ , and . . . and I don't like it."

Julie scoffs. "Don't like that I'm the same height as you, you mean."

"Yeah, what _is_ that? Because Lee — Lee's _massive_ all of a sudden, and you . . . Well, you look like shit, actually, if I'm being honest with you."

"Gee. Thanks," she replies dryly.

"I mean it, Jules. What's going on with you? I don't even recognise you."

"That's not exactly any of your business anymore," she says curtly. She's forgotten what it feels like to keep secrets. She's not had to lie since Quil finally joined the Pack. It's easier to be rude. "How long are you here for? You know, just so I can start preparing for the next three years I'm not going to see you."

It works, the nastiness. Adam's frustration dies and he turns truly uncomfortable underneath her glare as he mumbles something that sounds like, "'Til next week."

Julie suppresses a sigh at how long she's going to have to lie for. It's only Saturday. She _hates_ lying; she's so bad at it.

It's going to be a _long_ Spring Break.

.

**thirteen: julie**

.

The front door opens with a bang, almost coming off its hinges as Paula strides through it.

She looks at it a little guiltily. "Oops," she says before her head snaps back round to Julie, a cock-sure grin on her face. "Still don't know my own strength sometimes. I think being your Second has had an effect on me — you know, physically." She flexes her muscles theatrically, admiring herself. "God help us if I ever take over."

Julie can't help but agree. She rolls her eyes. "What do you want?"

"That's nice, isn't it?" Paula bemoans to the empty room. "I give her forty-eight hours of peace—"

"It's been nowhere _near_ forty—"

"—and all she can do is demand, ' _What do you want,'_ like I'm some kind of . . . some kind of _pest_."

"You _are_ a pest."

Paula's grin widens. "I know. But I'm so _bored_ , boss. I can't carry on for another day with only Quil and Sarah to listen to," she whines. "I can't. You have to come and save me. _Please_."

"You'll get over it," Julie says. She hasn't even seen Lee yet; she needs the downtime, the whole forty-eight hours she was promised. "Just make sure Quil gets at least an afternoon with Clay, probably tomorrow would be best, and as long as Sarah gets all her homework done then—"

"Jules," her brother begins, walking into the cramped living room, his arms laden with clothes, "why have all my old shorts been cut up like—"

Adam stops short in front of Paula, face dropping into a deep scowl at the sight of her. "And which one are you?"

Julie sighs. "Paula. That's Paula."

Adam stares and stares, and then — "Jesus, Jules. Are you all fucking mutants, or what? Lee _swore_ to me that it wasn't steroi— . . . Why — why is she looking at me like that?"

They both glance back at Paula, whose eyes are glistening with something resembling awe of seeing the sun for the first time.

Julie groans. Well, _shit._

So much for her forty-eight hour vacation.


	4. part four

**fourteen: leland**

.

It _has_ to be a dream.

Except they're not in the garage this time, where they usually meet. Where he watches her and breathes in her scent that carries even without wind, mingled with oil and metal, where they both know the world makes sense. No legends, no magic. It's just them.

There's no magic here, either. Not in his bedroom. Or maybe there is — because finally, finally, Julie is here. In _their_ bedroom, where they have been in his dreams so many times before.

But if it's not . . . if this is not their bedroom and this is real, if this world is real and it is not a dream, he hates it. So unbelievably cruel and unforgiving, giving him this moment that will surely be ripped away as quickly as it has presented itself.

He doesn't care.

He'll take it.

"Hi," she whispers, nervous and unsure of herself in a way she never allows anyone else to see.

Leland answers by lifting the blanket up, ready to welcome her home. She does not need to pretend here.

Julie hesitates for only a heartbeat before she kicks off her combat boots and slips beneath the sheets, her scent of pine and an autumn storm — of home — filling his senses in the darkness as she settles beside him.

He tangles his legs with hers as if it will give him a second longer. He holds onto her, hoping that when the time comes for her to disappear that he will go with her. Dream or real world, he doesn't care. He'll take it. This one moment.

He feels her stiffen against him. Just for a second. A second during which he wants to die because if it's not real then maybe it's not _that_ dream either. Maybe it's the nightmare where she pulls away and tells him he's got this all wrong.

But then she all but deflates in his arms. She presses her forehead against his neck, winding her arms around him, over him, desperate to close the barely-there space between them until they're one body.

Lee doesn't speak in these dreams — because that's what it must be. He doesn't need to say a word. He just buries his nose into her hair, breathes deep the scent he has long-since committed to memory, and he holds on.

.

He wakes.

He is alone.

He knew it was a dream.

Leland squeezes his eyes closed and buries his face into the pillow, mourning for a minute the loss he always feels when this happens. Every morning. Night after night. The dreams are relentless, impossible now that he's back on the Reservation where he knows she is, too.

Pine and autumn and something wild, something unable to be tamed. Metal and oil — the garage. He can still smell it. As if he's not taunted enough when he sleeps. Now it's carrying into wakefulness, too, torturing him and picking at his cowardice.

His minute is up. He only ever allows himself that long, because any longer and his resolve will surely shatter.

He rolls onto his back. Freezes when his arm smacks into—

Julie looks down at him from where she sits upright on the other side of the bed, her back against the headboard.

"You snore," she says, quiet and solemn-faced. She is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen in his goddamn life. "And you mumble in your sleep a lot."

He blinks dumbly, mouth opening and closing again as his brain struggles to catch up with the fact that Julie is _here_ and in his childhood bedroom and — _here,_ eyeing him like she's expecting him to jump and run.

"What — what did I say?"

"Dunno," she says, shrugging and looking back down at her hands in her lap.

Lee tips his head against the pillow and scrubs at his face, knowing better than to call her a liar. And when he glances over at the clock on his bedside table, he sees her battered boots on the carpet in the corner of his eye and knows with complete certainty that it wasn't a dream after all.

Julie is _here._ Has _been_ here — all night.

Very slowly, because if he doesn't think about the words coming out of his mouth then he's surely going to blow it, Lee asks, "How did you get in?"

"Window. I was going to leave, after . . ." She studies her nails closely, fingers curling tightly as she refuses to look at him again. "I mean, I wasn't sure if you were really awake. You seemed pretty out of it, and it's not like you would have . . . You know. Anyway. I figured if you knew what was going on, you probably would have freaked out. Just like I know you're doing now."

He ignores his heart picking up its pace now that his brain has caught up. "I'm not freaking out."

"Sure you're not, honey."

"I'm not," he lies again.

A corner of her mouth twitches. He loves her, he loves her.

"Seven months you haven't phased now," she says, rolling her eyes, "but you still think you can lie to me."

Seven months and nine days since he left her Pack. A hundred and fifty-two miles between the Rez and U-Dub. Five more days until he has to go back there.

"Okay," he concedes, propping himself up on his elbow and casually stretching his legs out, "maybe I am a _little_. But that's only because of the creeper vibes you're giving off, climbing through my window in the dead of night and watching me sleep."

It's another lie. And she knows it. But thankfully, she lets this one slide.

"I heard you snoring from the other side of the Reservation," she shoots back in a similar tone. Casual. Off-hand. "I thought a sucker had got you, all that noise you were making. I had to check."

"I can handle myself."

Julie gives him a long, level look that he knows translates to something like, _You're so full of bullshit, Leland Clearwater,_ before shaking her head. "Even still. I had to check," she says again.

He thinks that she's full of bullshit, too. But apparently they're not going to talk about the dream-that-wasn't-a-dream, and they're just going to sit on his bed like it's the most normal thing in the world.

He wishes it was.

Julie lets her hands drop into her lap and closes her eyes as she leans her head back on the wall. She looks tired, now that he's allowed to peer a little more closely. She looks less like herself every time he sees her. Drawn, pale. Skinnier than she should be, even with all the hard muscle and long limbs. Tiny.

"You're not looking after yourself," he accuses before he can stop to remember that he needs to _think_ before he lets his mouth run away with him. He can't ruin this, whatever this is. Whatever is happening, has happened. He's gone too long pretending that he's fine without her and the Pack for her to just run and leave him now.

( _You left first,_ a small voice reminds him.)

She sighs, keeps her eyes closed. "I'm trying."

Lee waits for an explanation. He doesn't believe her. The next time he sees her, there might not be anything of her left.

"I am," she protests, because of course she knows that his eyes are still on her. She knows everything, feels everything. She is the Alpha. Still _his_ Alpha.

She'd been right, the last time he saw her: he will always be Pack, even if he decided that he didn't want to be anymore. He has as little chance of escaping from that fact of life as much as he has of not loving her.

"I even gave myself some time off," she continues. "I put Paula in charge and everything."

"Jeez. Things must be bad if you did that."

Julie smiles. He can't remember the last time he saw her smile. "She's second-in-command now, you know," she tells him, and then her smile stretches even further when she cracks an eye open to witness the shock on his face. Her own is a picture of innocence. "What? Someone had to step up when Emma left."

"But — _Paula._ "

Jules shrugs, still smiling. Lee thinks it might be more at the thought of Paula than it is anything else, and he realises with a small amount of horror that Julie actually considers the other girl a _friend._

Pack is one thing. Sister is another. They have no choice in that. But _friends_. That's something else.

"Things have gone a bit downhill since I left, huh?"

Julie pokes his shoulder. "It suits her. Being Second. She's good at it."

Paula mellowed out after Julie accepted her birthright, he knows that. Paula Lahote went from an insufferably rude and loud hothead to someone who was actually tolerable, and by the time he joined the Pack she was even kind of nice. Despite her reputation _._ He still found her annoying, though. Madly so _._

But _second-in-command?_

"Wow. I'm surprised Sarah hasn't called to complain about her. I just kind of assumed Quil had taken over. I thought she would have been a shoe-in for it."

"Nah. Too down-to-earth. That's why she works as Third — like you did. You were a good Third," Julie says, almost wistful, and it's hard for the wolf inside of Lee to not preen at the praise — especially when it comes from the Alpha. "Paula . . . She just works, you know?"

He doesn't. But he gave up that privilege of knowing seven months and nine days ago. Still, he nods.

Jules sighs. She looks sad suddenly, once again more like the person who's wasting away in front of him now that her smile has disappeared and isn't lighting up her face. "She'll be leaving soon, I guess," she says, "so I suppose I'll have to promote Quil anyway — and your sister, I guess. She'll love that. Another new dynamic to get used to."

"Paula's leaving?"

Julie seems confused for a minute, looking at him as if she thinks he might be stupid. And then, "Oh, right. You don't know."

His silence prods for the answer.

She shakes her head and sits up straight, legs crossing underneath her and crinkling the bedsheets. "I still forget sometimes. I'll look at Emma, or Jade, and wonder if they're being purposefully annoying. But then I remember they're not in our heads anymore."

He knows that feeling. He still gets frustrated when people don't understand the point he's trying to get across, even now.

"Paula imprinted," she explains, and a strange expression flashes over her features but then Lee blinks and it's gone. "Another one bites the dust."

"What? On who?"

"I'll give you three guesses, but you'll only need one," Julie says. "Hint: he came home at the same time you did."

Lee almost chokes on a breath. " _Adam?_ "

"I know. At least I don't have to bother lying to him, I guess."

"Are you _sure_?" he demands, astounded. " _Adam?_ "

"I know," Julie says again. "Life's a bitch, ain't it? Suppose I've got you to blame for that one, considering you were the one who brought him home and all. Heard you chewed him out pretty good, too."

That brings Lee up short. It snaps him out of his shock, and he tries to will his face into a reflection of appropriate guilt. "I — uh —"

"Don't worry. He deserved it." She's smiling, teasing and light. "But I'm still blaming you."

Lee pulls a face. "Sorry," he mumbles, sounding anything but.

Silence.

And then—

 _"Adam?"_ he blurts again. He can't help himself.

It's been months since Lee has heard Julie laugh, months and months, and the crushing relief he feels that he can still elicit those sounds from her after so long apart finally has him laughing, too.

It's not a dream.

.

**fifteen: leland**

.

After he seems to have accepted that it's because of supernatural forces, not steroids, which has his sister and their childhood friends looking like "mutants", Adam learns about imprinting.

He tells Paula that, more than anything, he just wants a buddy. He says he likes Seattle and he likes college but everyone in the city is kinda weird (Lee readily agrees with him there) and nobody really understands what it's like, coming from a tribe like theirs in La Push.

"They're all a bit — you know, white."

Paula grins. She agrees to be the best friend he's ever had, kisses him on the cheek, and that's that. She leaves with a skip in her step, and she goes back to the Pack.

Lee watches the whole conversation on the side-lines with Julie and afterwards they stare at each other, confused and staggered in equal measure.

He hasn't wallowed in his ' _my-girlfriend-almost-fiancée-left-me-for-my-cousin'_ self-pity in years now, but he decides right there and then that he's not going to speak to Elliott for the rest of the year.

Julie laughs when he tells her. She thinks that he's joking.

He's not.

Elliott and Sam can go to hell.


End file.
